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0187 India and Tibet : vol.1
インドとチベット : vol.1
India and Tibet : vol.1 / 187 ページ(カラー画像)

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doi: 10.20676/00000295
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CROSSING THE FIRST PASS   153

of Colonel Hogge and his officers, with whom I was to

be so closely associated in future, and in whom I always

found such firm supporters. And by December 10

General Macdonald and his staff, the bulk of the troops

for the advance, Mr. White, Mr. Walsh, Captain O'Connor,

and myself had all rendezvoused at Gnatong, ready to move

into 'Tibet.

The force then assembled consisted of two guns, No. 7

Mountain Battery, Royal Artillery ; a Maxim gun de-

tachment of the Norfolk Regiment ; two guns, 7-pounders,

8th Gurkhas ; half-company 2nd Sappers ; eight companies

23rd Sikh Pioneers ; six companies 8th Gurkhas ; with

field hospitals, engineer field park, ammunition column,

telegraph, postal, and survey department detachments.

In spite of foot-and-mouth disease among the pack-

bullocks, of sickness and desertion amongst the Nepalese

Coolie Corps, and of rinderpest, Major Bretherton had

succeeded in accumulating a month's supply for the troops

and ten days' fodder for the animals, and General Mac-

donald was able to make a short march on the 11th to

the foot of the Jelap-la (pass) with the first column,

consisting of 1,150 fighting men, four guns, and four

Maxims.

On December 12 we crossed the pass itself. It is

14,390 feet in height, and leads, not across the main

watershed of the Himalayas, but across the range dividing

Sikkim from Chumbi, a sharp, bare, rocky ridge. The

ascent to it was very steep, and, as the ridge formed the

boundary between Sikkim and Tibet, it was possible we

might be opposed at the summit.

But on the question of opposition I had had some

communication with the Tibetans. News of the assembly

of troops and of the preparations we were making had

naturally reached the Tibetans, and on November 28

Captain Parr, who was in Chinese employ, associated with

the Chinese delegate, informed me that the Tibetans were

expecting that, before any advance was made into their

country, the British Government would make a formal

declaration of their intention ; that if they intended to

make war they would make a formal declaration of war.